About Us

Who We Are

Hi! My name is WC Lee.

I am the father of two competitive swimmers in California, and
I work full-time as an engineer for a Fortune 100 Company.
I learned Computer Programming, when I was in College. However, I have never written
software as part of my regular job nor do I have any formal training in
Website development.

I try to attend a least part of every
swim practice. I sit or stand quitely on the side and watch them swim. I attend
every meet and cheer for my kids.
My eldest child has progressed to the Senior Meet level, which means
every other weekend, we have a swim meet to attend.

Basically, my life for the past several years, has been Family, Work and Swimming
(in that order, though sometimes
Swimming temporarily moves up a notch or two).

How Did This Website Start

In 2012, I volunteered to be the Website Administrator from my kids' swim team. Before I took over, the
team manually maintained the records of the overall best times for each event, sex and age group. This
meant that the records were frequently out of date.

One of the first things that I did as the Website Administrator was to write a software program
to automate keeping track of the team records. This software program read the results
from each swim meet, updated the records and reported when a record had been broken.
It was very motivating for the swimmer to be acknowledged that he/she had broken a record
on the Monday after a swim meet.

This record-tracking software program became the genesis of this Website.

Why Are We Doing This

I was interested to see how my children's swim times compared against others in the same age.
I looked on the Internet and saw that there were websites that showed how young athletes ranked in
other sports (such as Tennis, Track and Cross Country), but nothing for swimmers. All we had
was the USA Swimming Website.

Who ever designed the USA Swimming Website did a poor job on the user interface. The USA Swimming Website is very
cumbersome to use and slow. In order to retrieve any information, you have to provide a lot of information.
For example, If you wanted to find out the event times for a swimmer,
you had to type in the swimmer's last name and first name, then the date range and finally select the event.
It was even worse if you wanted to find out where a swimmer ranked against other swimmers. In this case, you
had to fill in not only the first name, last name, date range and select the event, but you also had to select
the cut/standard and the age range. Once you did all this, you had to scroll through several pages, to find
the swimmer you were interested in. Entering this information was an inconvenience using a computer, but it
made it extremely difficult to use the USA Swimming Website if you were using a tablet or smartphone.

I did not understand why the USA Swimming Website was not setup so that all you
had to do was just point and click. These days, with tablets and smartphones, that is the standard for a friendly website.
If I had been up to me, I would have designed it so you would not had have to type anything.

I thought about it for a while and realized that, since my record-tracking software program was able to
read the results from the swim meets that my children's swim team attended, there was no reason why it could not read
the results from ALL the swim meets.

In early 2013, I expanded my software program so that it reported where our team's swimmers ranked
in our Local Swimming Committee and in California. I fed the software program the results from each
swim meet in California, and it would output a Top 100 ranking for each event, sex and age group.
I put the information on our team's website and shared it with the
other parents and swimmers on our team.

I got a lot of positive feedback from our swim team and decided to share the information with
others outside of our team. I created this website in August of 2013. Originally, the website focused
only on California Swimmers. I expanded it to 17 other states in January 2014. By November of 2014,
I was able to cover almost all of the United States.

Privacy

As a swim parent, I take privacy seriously. There is nothing on the website that is not already publicly
available on the USA Swimming Website. Each swimmer's past event times are on the USA
Swimming Website, as well as where each swimmer ranks in the Local Swim Committee and
Nationally. Anyone can go to the USA Swimming Website, type in a swimmer's name and find all
of the information that is on this website. In addition, most of the swim meet results are posted on the Internet
in one form or another.

What this website does is format the information so that is easier to access and understand than it
is on the USA Swimming Website.

If you have concerns about the information that is on this website or if you would like to remove a swimmer from this website, please send me an email at
swimmingrank@gmail.com.

What Are Our Plans

I would like to continue to improve and expand the information and data that is presented on the website.
My goal is to make this website a place that swimmers and
their families would want to visit on a regular basis.

I have gotten feedback from many people and have incorporated their suggestions and comments
into enhancements to the website. If you have a suggesstion or comment, please send me an email
at swimmingrank@gmail.com

However, you should realize that this website is basically a 'hobby'. Consequently, it may take me a while to add features.
The only available time that I have is on the weekends that my children do not have swim meets and when I have no other family commitments.

I hope you enjoy using this website.

--WC Leeswimmingrank@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: This Website is not affiliated with USA Swimming nor any Local Swim Committee. The information on this website is not to be viewed as official times nor as official rankings.
While we use reasonable efforts to include the most up to date and accurate information on our website,
we make no representations as to the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the information.
The information provided within this website is provided for entertainment purposes only.
The information on this website is not intended to be used in any form as part of a College or University Admission Application